One year and 8 months after being laid off, my old shop called me back to work. I am now there for 20-25 hours a week, working as a coppersmith again, helping with custom and prototype work. When I got the call I was not exactly thrilled. I am taking a semester's worth of courses this summer, I watch three small domestic terrorists when my wife is as work, I have a lot of paperwork to do in an almost certainly fruitless effort to get some Obama money to pay for this, that, and the other when I start nursing clinicals in the Fall, and, perhaps most of all, the brief period of time I will be working (about 4 months in total) is during the hottest time of the year. Today it was 105 degrees at my soldering table. Soldering furnaces and the smith's forges in a metal building in a particularly humid Memphis summer make the soul melt.
But all in all, I am glad to be back. The circumstances are perfect. I'm not the foreman anymore, and a part-time temporary coppersmith doesn't have to worry in the slightest about the owner's latest temper-tantrum. I don't have to talk to customers anymore, or salesmen, and only once since coming back have I had to talk to a designer. Not having to deal with the wealthy people we make lanterns for makes the making of lanterns that much more pleasurable.
This past Saturday I had to cut some plexiglas for a nibble pattern. This involved me going over to the woodshop area of the shop. It is in a leg of the shop, towards the back, that is dark and poorly ventilated, with low ceilings. Even now that it has much less in it than it used to I feel a bit claustrophobic and crammed in when I walk over there. It is where the coppersmith department was when I first started working here. The workers routinely described it as a dungeon - freezing cold in the winter, unbearably hot in the summer - with permanent clouds of lead and copper dust mixed with flux vapor. It looked and sounded something like a Tom Waits video - one of the more weird ones. The folks who worked there looked the part as well. I remember saying to myself, upon first walking back there, that I would give myself three months, and then we would move back to MN. 3 months somehow turned into 75 before I was laid off. After my first few years there the coppersmiths would move from the dungeon to the much more spacious area they work today. At the time of the move we had 15 coppersmiths and coppersmith apprentices and a couple non-skill folks in the department. Today they are down to 4 old coppersmiths, and one ochlophobic part-timer. The amount of space they have now is surreal. I can't look at all the workstations without remembering the many faces and names which passed through there over the years. A lot of people think that they want to be a coppersmith. Coppersmith's apprentice sounds romantic, but most folks are not crazy enough, or simply can't work with their hands. When I think about this, I think about some of the Chesterton society members I knew in MN (which is kind of the HQ for the American Chesterton society, as President Dale is there). The hard-core Chestertonians I have known in life have generally shared one thing in common with Chesterton - a romantic view of forms of manual labor they are completely incapable of doing themselves.
The best part about going back to work has been catching up with old friends. I am certainly not sure of what human life is, but so far as I can tell it has something to do with the collecting of narratives. I am sure some of these stories I have told before, but these have been pressed on my mind again of late, and so I write:
G. I have mentioned him before on this blog. G. came to us fresh out of rehab, on methadone (for his heroin addiction). We tried him as a coppersmith and it didn't work out. As he readily admitted, he had trouble concentrating. We switched him over to the blacksmith's department, which was behind at the time, thinking we could use him for a few more weeks of grunt work and then let him go. But he did well over there. He asked me to get him into a blacksmithing class at the ornamental metal museum, and the company paid for it. One class was followed by another and another. He ended up staying on as a blacksmith's apprentice, which is where he was when I was laid off. Upon returning, G. told me he had been off methadone for over a year, and married the girlfriend he had been living with. He had recently run his first 5k. A few weeks after I came back to the shop, through an unusual series of events, the lead blacksmith was let go. G. was asked to take his place. I don't know that I have ever seen anyone master fabrication blacksmithing in that short a period of time. G. has an exceptional work ethic and is one of the nicest, most genuinely kind men you will ever meet.
G. grew up in a 'fundamentalist' Prot family in the rural midwest. He got the hell out of dodge as soon as he could, headed to Memphis to find the trouble he found; became a part of the Memphis punk scene. G. is short and skinny and his temperament is such that does not fit into the type A militaristic macho man world of certain types of rural American fundamentalist circles. He had no contact with his parents for years, so far as I know he still doesn't. He has a sister, a homeschooling (4 or 5 kids now) fundy Prot mom married to a fundy Prot pastor, who has kept in touch with G. When G. speaks of his family, he contrasts a world of harshness with the gentle love of his sister. For many years now he has gone back up to Illinois to spend a week with his sister. I would love to be a fly on the wall up there for that week. G. is gentle but a bit rough, he speaks and looks like a man who has slept in gutters and lived the punk life to its fullest. I imagine those nephews and nieces don't encounter the likes of G. at Sunday School. Of course, he also knows the rules of the world he goes back to. And his countenance has changed. His eyes are clear of the glaze.
A. and M. are brothers. A. was the first coppersmith I sat next to and worked with when I began with the company. He is one of the 4 remaining. Their father was a murderer who was himself murdered when their mother finally had had enough of the abuse. A. and M. are 2 of 17 siblings. I think 6 or 7 of them share their mother. Both men are near the age of 50 now. M. has a long scar on his face from a knife fight fought years ago. A. is the only black man I know who sings along to Elton John and Boy George and Cindy Lauper songs, word for word. When he isn't listening to 80s pop on the radio, he sings church music to himself. A. is always happy, excepting the time he and his wife, Stella, split up. One day he came into the shop and threw a bunch of things around, finally going outside to kick some trees and throw rocks at the metal roof of the building behind ours. The day after that he was his happy self again. When I came back this summer for part-time work, M. asked how I was doing. Both A. and M. follow a sort of folk Protestantism that is akin to the folk Catholicisms Arturo blogs about. There are "extra-ecclesial" rituals, and all of life is viewed as a sort of dark comedic mystery, with its magics and curses and blessings which can overcome some curses and so forth. Both A. and M. think that I am set apart in some fashion I do not entirely understand, because of my faith, and also because of the name I go by at work, a biblical name, which they are both fascinated with (both of them have biblical names; not all of their siblings do, and A. once told me that the ones with biblical names were the ones that made it - one of their non-biblical named brothers also worked at the shop, he once went to the doc on a workers comp claim insisting that the flux in the air was giving him rashes - the doc told him that flux cannot cause syphilis and the workman's comp claim was denied). I find this very interesting, because they know me as a man who drinks and cusses and gets as angered and frustrated as any other at work. They have always supported me, even when as foreman I certainly couldn't have been said to have always supported them. It is as if they always choose to see this better me, regardless of what happens to be appearing in front of them. As I was walking away from M. after our first conversation after my coming back this May, he asked me if I needed anything, knowing I'd been unemployed for a long while. This is a man who has not had the best ride this recession either, being laid off and coming back for stints off and on. But I am pretty sure that if I had said yes he would have gotten me what I said I needed, somehow, someway.
Thinking of their folk Protestantism reminds me, first and foremost, of the fool prophet Marco. Marco and his first cousin Mq (who still works at the shop) are the nephews of Tread (his actual name), who was a metal spinner when I first started. Tread was the one with the beautiful bass voice singing old spirituals each morning - before all the machines and fires were turned on and lit his voice resonated throughout the whole shop. Tread was a homosexual and a drug addict who found Jesus and went clean and chaste the last 8 or 9 years of his life. He died of AIDS a few years ago. I was at the wake (which for some reason was in the heart of South Memphis though Tread had lived in Frayser his whole life) for about an hour, during which time I was the only white person there (the wake lasted 6 or 7 hours I think). There were women in an ecstatic trance-like state in front of Tread's open coffin. His family poured all over me when I got there and began telling me of all the premonitions and signs of his death, and the signs of Tread having communicated with them through dreams and visions in the few days since he had died. We have a banner with his picture on it in the shop. Tread was a good man. Because of Tread Marco and Mq would end up coming to work in the shop.
Marco is the funniest man I have ever met in my life. In comedy, timing is everything, and Marco can time his facial expressions and voice perfectly. His face is large, and uniquely expressive, and his eyes bulge a bit, which Marco utilizes perfectly. During morning break for nearly a couple of years he would basically give us an original comedy routine on any and all matters for 15 minutes each day. Almost every day I cried from laughter. Marco always called me "Mathis", for reasons I never knew, which in Frayser dialect sounds a lot like the way black north Memphians pronounce "Memphis." My boss asked me several times why Marco always called me Memphis.
When I first started working there, as a coppersmith's apprentice I spent a lot of time each day on the big metal shears, blanking metal for orders. Marco, who was the junior spinner, was doing all of the blanking for the metal spinning department, so we had the opportunity to talk for hours each day. Once Marco learned that I had studied theology, he frequently wanted to talk about God. In the theology of Marco, he was living in hell, and in a state of constant argument with God. In the midst of this argument, he had the Patriarch Abraham on his side, and his dead grandmother, and Jesus when Marco was really in a pinch, all of whom occasionally interceded with God on Marco's behalf. Marco knew his Bible surprisingly well, having been brought to church by his grandmother as a child. Very interestingly to me, having heard aplenty the then trendy term Anawim in college, Marco referred to himself as God's poor, and he believed that he had every right to make demands of God. He even once told me that Abraham sometimes allowed others to "dip the tip of their fingers in water, and cool my tongue." The context of him telling me this was his explanation of how his visiting a prostitute after work each payday (once a week then) fit into his theological schema. He believed that he was in hell, that his life was hell. He believed that God could thus not send him to hell, because he was already there. God, in Marco's hell, provided him with certain occasional creature comforts, in response to Marco's continued wrestling with God - allowances for Marco's prayers and the good deeds he did in his hell.
Marco had an uncanny ability to win at gambling. Whether at the casinos in Tunica, or at one of the little illegal gambling outfits in Memphis, Marco came back with money more often than not. I sometimes witnessed this, as one of these gambling outfits was in the back of an old gas station that had been turned into a soul food restaurant that Marco, L., and I used to sometimes go to at lunch. Marco would pray before he gambled, insisting, quite loudly and with much profanity, that God give him a winning that day. One time I was particularly caught by a phrase Marco used - he insisted that God not treat him like his [earthly] father had treated him, that God be good to him. A few weeks later in one of our metal shearing conversations I asked him about that. In an unusually sober conversation, he told me of his early childhood, from birth until the age of 5 or 6, when his father died. His father did unspeakable things to him, burnings, cuttings, beatings. With tears in his eyes he told me that his grandmother had taught him to pray to get through those "episodes." In the logic of the world I come from I angrily wondered why the hell she didn't call child protective services. But whatever the logic or illogic, Marco, in a very unorthodox but I suppose very common manner, became a man of prayer. My wife was hospitalized while pregnant with our firstborn, she had a very high fever and was in the hospital for over a week, hallucinating and in and out of consciousness at times. When Marco told me he would pray for her he was one of the few folks who told me as much whom I actually believed. I can only imagine the monologue (or dialogue, who am I to say?) that those prayers consisted of.
Marco was a bit odd looking, but he was not an unattractive fellow, quite muscular and in good shape, and there were women who from time to time expressed interest in him. It was something of a surprise then that he lived with a girlfriend who was very, very heavy (450+ pounds I would guess). She had a lot of health problems and Marco would miss work from time to time to take her to the doctor. He had been with her for many years. I asked him about their relationship once and he told me that he had "let her down" some years ago and would not do it again. Years ago my first intellectual mentor and I were talking about the movie Schindler's List. My mentor noted that the figure of Oskar Schindler in the movie, despite all of those things which Evangelical Christians would consider great moral faults, had a peculiar righteousness to him, an Old Testament sort of righteousness, as my mentor put it. I sometimes think of Marco in that way. His is a world of a great deal of darkness, all under a harsh veil. But I have encountered few hearts that had the warmth of Marco's heart. I will remember his tears and think of the little boy praying the prayers his grandmother taught him, demanding that God not treat him as his father did, demanding with appeal to the rights that God, in His calling a fucked up world still good, forever gives to His Anawim.
Marco got fired after threatening the production manager, whom he never got along with, right in front of the parent company's owner and lead salesman. His cousin Mq told me that Marco did a stint in the pokey after getting caught selling pot (which reminded me immediately of Marco's grandiose explanation of his full proof plan for not ever getting caught - his steady income has always been from selling pot), but is now back home again, playing video games in the morning and "working" in the afternoons and evenings. May God protect him.
Perhaps of everyone still there I am most glad to see R. again. R. is the oldest and wisest of the coppersmiths. R., in his mid 50s, was the "surprise baby" of parents who were in their late 40s when they had him. His parents were sharecroppers in northeast Arkansas, and the story of R.'s life is the story of a Johnny Cash who didn't make it big. He had been in Arkansas rock bands from his teens until just a few years ago. For a decade before he became a coppersmith R. worked with his wife at her dad's gas station in rural Arkansas. One time, just as they were locking up, a robber tried to grab the money bag and when she would not give it up the robber grabbed R.'s wife and held a gun to her head. R. always carried a handgun with him. He had gone around back to get the car, heard the screaming, and ran back out front. His wife yelled at R. to "shoot the son of the bitch" even as that SOB was holding a gun to her head, her still refusing to let go of the cash. R. pulled out his gun, and the robber turned his gun from R.'s wife to R. Both exchanged shots, nobody was hit, and the police caught the robber on foot a few miles away in a field. R. says his hands were shaking when he was firing the gun, which is very difficult for me to imagine, as he has the most steady hands I have ever seen.
His hands are a marvel, I wish there were some way I could inconspicuously take a photograph of them, but then again I sometimes think there are too pure a thing to photograph. R.'s hands and fingers are permanently swollen and deeply cracked from years of heat and flux. I have never seen any other hands like them. The crevices of the many cracks are little canyons, with a sediment of lead and copper dust which can never be fully washed away. Scorched earth in place of skin. R. has a strength in his hands which is truly astounding, he can press out dents in spun metal by hand that are simply impossible for anyone else, and there is no rusty nut he cannot remove by hand. There is an aesthetic quality to his hands which evokes both great strength and a wornness and tiredness that is, simply, beautiful. The hands are the icon of the man. He is never late, always there, day after day, decade after decade, in unbearable heat and the irritatingly humid cold of Memphis winters. Until a few years ago when I pressed him to do it he never used a fan at work. R. was my primary partner and teacher in most of my years there, and I consider it one of the great privileges of my life to know him. He never wastes time at work, he never says anything he does not mean, and is one of the only men I have spent a lot of time with in life of whom I can say I have never seen him even slightly kiss the ass of a superior. With R. you get what you get. And what you get is probably one of the last purely honest working men this country has left.
There is N., who started just a few months after I did, and is now the only coppersmith under the age of 40 left in the shop, which may be why he is the supervisor of the coppersmith department, as he is the only one with the energy to do it (he is also an extremely gifted metalworker). N. is north Mississippi redneck and in the first conversation I had with N., he showed me the photo of his two sons. I asked if they were twins. No. 7 months apart. He then explained that while the mother of his firstborn was 7 months pregnant he, uh, reconnected with an old girlfriend, noting "I was the asshole."
When N. was 15 his brother just barely caught him as he was walking with his step-dad's loaded .45 headed toward the living room to off his step-dad and himself. His brother wrestled the gun away from him. N. was selling cocaine in his late teens and early 20s, but started to settle down when the babies came. The mother of the first born forgave him and they eventually married, but after putting his fist through several walls and a door they split up and divorced, which was the state of things when I was laid off. Since then they have gotten back together but have not remarried. N. is convinced that the relationship works best when they are not married. I don't have the heart to tell him that in the eyes of God they still are, but I know J., his wife, well enough to know that she believes that. Today N. gave me half of his sports drink when he saw that I was too hot. I thought in that moment, there is very little of each other's lives that we do not know.
S. is the shop mechanic. I wrote of him here when I noted:
The lead mechanic in my shop is a man by the name of S. He has been deaf, completely so, since the age of two. When an engine or a moving part of one of our machines, say a lathe, a milling machine, a grinder, or a drill press begins to have a problem, S., who has been working on these machines for over a quarter of a century, will rest his hand on the machine as it runs or struggles to run. Time and time again, he will tell the person standing next to him, often enough me, what the machine sounds like. He has never heard any sound from any of these machines. He only knows what others have described to him as those sounds caused by certain problems, and he can diagnose those problems, with a near 100% accuracy, simply by feeling the vibrations the machine is making. He knows these old machines (most of which predate WWII and several of which predate WWI) through his touch, and his touch provides a far more accurate knowledge than the hearing or sight of anyone else in the shop, even those who have been there decades as well.
S., a lifelong Cooper-Young neighborhood resident, spent his school days in the Memphis City Schools. He once told me that the first time anyone ever sat with him at lunch was during his junior year of high school. He has always been a bit of a loner and delightfully curmudgeonly. Watching him get upset and cuss is quite something to behold. S. has three kids, two of whom have worked at the shop, one of them for a number of years, and I have come to know the family pretty well. Both daughters have struggled with drug issues, and the son, the youngest, who is a brilliant kid, now supplies one of Memphis' elite high schools (they have a rich great aunt) with pot. He makes straight A's but the school is threatening to kick him out if he can't pass a drug test before the end of summer. Daughter K. used to come over and help clean our house after my wife had babies. Her life, by her own admission, is something akin to that depicted on the BBC series Skins. S. has shown me how to fix what I know how to fix of my truck and house, and has been something of a staple of my time in Memphis. We have gone to a number of jobsites together over the years as even though he reads lips perfectly well - the sort of folks who buy our lights (or the folks who run their households) are often uncomfortable being around a deaf guy, especially a deaf guy who doesn't give a damn about their feelings. Last week bossman, S., and I went to another metal shop to look at a riveter my shop was thinking about buying. Bossman "translated" as S. asked his questions. I noted again the inquisitiveness and latent knowledge in S.'s hands as he touched and caressed the old Chicago riveter. I think of S. as being in the image of the comic book superhero. He has this obvious woundedness, but this amazing power in his hands, this sense of touch that is almost superhuman. But to look at him is to look at loneliness. And as S. gets older he seems to fall further within himself. I hope that there is peace for him there.
At my shop there are and have been many more stories like these - this is all I have time for at the moment. In light of my recent thoughts on America I offer these stories, for whatever they are worth. This land is your land, this land is my land. When I think of the America I love, I think of stories like these, and places like my shop.
I have no idea why God brought me back there for another season. I'm going to nursing school, which in theory will take me away from this world forever. I cringe somewhat at the thought of that. Who will pray Marco's prayers for me then?
I think that I have a simple appetite with regard to living a human life, or I like to think so anyway. At the shop the images of life tend to portray brutality or mercy. There is not so much in between. There is the requisite human posturing and affectedness, but in the metalshop world all of that is so worn on the sleeve and so often ridiculously overpronounced; there isn't the sardonic nuance or social sophistication one finds in less rough environs. I was thinking about this after reading this post by Fr. Jonathan. I think it is possible to have a Christianity without those who are materially rich, in a given time under given circumstances. But I do not think it possible to have a Christianity without those who are materially (or mentally as Fr. Jonathan would point out) poor. This is not to equate material poverty with the greater good of spiritual poverty. It is only to say that in the midst of the stuff of earth, the wine, wheat, water, oil, earth, metal, paint, wood, bone, flesh, and glass through which God saves us, the material poor are a leaven of sorts, an image of a reality that the Church cannot be far removed from and still remain the Church.
Despite years, here in Memphis and elsewhere, of living and working with the poor, and being pretty poor myself at times, I still fall into the usual blindnesses. Today I was purchasing bottles of water for the shop and while loading the cases into the back of bossman's truck a man walked up carrying a trashbag. He did not look particularly tough but I was so busy being on my guard that I forgot to offer him some water, on this very hot day. When I came to my senses I took off down the street trying to find him, but he was gone. I did find another disheveled fellow sitting in the shade to give water to, but inevitably the one that got away will be the angel I will have to answer to on judgment day. Maybe Marco will be there to plead my case, profanely daring God to not treat me like Marco's father treated him. Maybe. Though it seems, when it comes down to it, that mercy is brutal.
